The writings were recently revealed as part of a live webcast, which has been archived and can be viewed here.

"We're getting a vastly better understanding of one of the greatest minds of all times," says Uwe Bergmann, a scientist involved in the project.

"We are also showing it is possible to read completely hidden texts in ancient documents without harming them," Bergmann adds.

The document in this case is The Archimedes Palimpsest, a goatskin parchment upon which a scribe copied seven important treatises of the Greek scholar, who lived from 287-212 BC.

The hidden text was part of a work Archimedes called The Method of Mechanical Theorems, which proved to contain diagrams, equations and previously unknown letters.

Historians are surprised that the manuscript even exists. Someone may have rescued the original papyrus version when the Royal Library at Alexandria, which contained monumental works by scholars from the ancient world, suffered a series of fires beginning around 89 BC.

Many scientists believe that if all of the works of early scientists and mathematicians had survived, greater progress would have been possible during the Renaissance, as academics wouldn't have had to rediscover principles already documented.

It will take some time to determine, exactly, what the newly unveiled text means.

But the rest of the document contains some of the earliest known references to geometry, physics and the concept of infinity, which later contributed to the invention of calculus.

It also describes a puzzle game that was somewhat similar to Rubik's cube.

In the 13th century, Greek monks recycled the parchment into a prayer book. Then 10th century forgers painted gold foil imagery onto the recycled pages in an effort to increase the manuscript's value.

As a result, Archimedes' original text is buried beneath both the gold image and the prayers. Only the underside of the parchment hints at its original content.

The manuscript's owner, who wishes to remain anonymous, paid U$2 million for the document at auction in 1998. Two conservators recently brought the rare text to California for the x-ray scan.

"To my knowledge, this is the first time the Stanford equipment will be used for such an application," says Mary Miller, a science producer at San Francisco's Exploratorium museum, which hosted the event.

Miller says that the high-tech equipment is often used to study photosynthesis in leaves at the molecular level. The powerful device is now tuned to read iron, which was in the ancient scribe's ink.

Iron atoms have 26 electrons orbiting around a nucleus. The x-ray beam literally knocks out one of the electrons in the iron atom's innermost orbit.

Another electron then replaces the missing one, but it has less energy because the nuclear bond is not as tight. The lost energy emitted by the replacement electrons results in the signature x-ray glow.